Pharmacy Travel Health Services in Canada: Experience of Early Adopters

Abstract

Since 2007, community pharmacists in Canada have become increasingly involved in delivering Travel Health services, including the recommendation and administration of vaccines. This qualitative scoping survey examines some of the activities and opinions of those early pharmacist adopters delivering these services. A Survey Monkey free text questionnaire was emailed to pharmacists who were involved in delivering travel medicine services. 21 pharmacists responding represented seven Canadian provinces. Only 5 pharmacists estimated that they were seeing five or more patients a week on average. Amongst the challenges they faced the most quoted was lack of time when running a busy pharmacy (62%) a lack of prescribing authority, (52%), and lack of access to public health vaccines (52%). ‘Word of mouth’ was widely quoted as a means of developing the service, indicating a good patient satisfaction. Also expressed were the advantages of convenience in terms of being a ‘one stop shop’, ease of billing to insurance companies and convenient appointment times. There are a number of challenges which are still to be faced which may be resolved by further legislation allowing access to public health vaccines and more widespread prescribing rights. The relatively low level of consultations reported by some is of concern if those pharmacists are to maintain competence.

Pharmacies in the Airport Ecosystem and How They Serve Travelers’ Health and Medicines Need: Findings and Implications for the Future

“…24 In contrast, in Canada, pharmacists are authorized to administer vaccines and in some regions are authorized to provide prescription medicines including travel health related medicines. 25 In addition, there is sometimes significant difference within the same country in terms of scope of practice in travel health. For example, in the United States, in the state of New Mexico, pharmacists are authorized to administer vaccines and furnish prescription medicines independently without collaborative practice agreements (CPA) with physicians.…”

Assessing the Travel Health Knowledge of Australian Pharmacists

“…Many travellers do not seek pre-travel health advice before travelling overseas, and those who do mainly obtain advice from general practitioners (GP) or travel health clinics [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ]. Reasons given for failing to obtain pre-travel health advice include the travellers’ lack of perception of the risks associated with their destination or difficulties in making appointments with travel health providers [ 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 ]. Pharmacists are often seen as being accessible and convenient due to their extensive opening hours, thus offering an attractive alternative to increase the frequency and quality of pre-travel advice sought by some travellers [ 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 ].…”

“…Reasons given for failing to obtain pre-travel health advice include the travellers’ lack of perception of the risks associated with their destination or difficulties in making appointments with travel health providers [ 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 ]. Pharmacists are often seen as being accessible and convenient due to their extensive opening hours, thus offering an attractive alternative to increase the frequency and quality of pre-travel advice sought by some travellers [ 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 ]. Pharmacists do play a significant role in the provision of travel health services, although the complexity of the travel health services offered by pharmacists varies somewhat from country to country and region to region [ 9 , 10 ].…”

“…Pharmacists are often seen as being accessible and convenient due to their extensive opening hours, thus offering an attractive alternative to increase the frequency and quality of pre-travel advice sought by some travellers [ 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 ]. Pharmacists do play a significant role in the provision of travel health services, although the complexity of the travel health services offered by pharmacists varies somewhat from country to country and region to region [ 9 , 10 ]. In Australia, although most pharmacists will at least respond to simple travel-related requests when asked, most pharmacists play a limited role, and although pharmacist immunisation with a limited range of vaccines is now common, pharmacists are unable to administer travel-related vaccinations such as cholera and yellow fever [ 10 ].…”

Pharmacist services and medication adherence in diabetes care in Indonesia

“…[215,257] As one of the most accessible healthcare professionals in community pharmacies, pharmacists can be perceived by patients as easy to meet to discuss medication problems. [262,274,277,[279][280][281] This can be a great advantage and asset for pharmacists to provide services that focus on patients by becoming healthcare professionals who can help patients in need. Flexibility in the access to meet with pharmacists is also preferred by pharmacists, as seen in Chapter 4.…”